Any advice for Florida Weave?

[LindyAdele]

Trying a new support method this year for my small (city backyard) tomato beds.
I am attempting a Florida weave system but have never seen it done in person, just heard about it!

• Does anyone have a favourite string/twine to use? Is regular jute bailers twine fine or do I need something heavy duty?
  
  Do the lines of string need to be super tight? What do I do if they loosen and stretch after running them? Because as tight as I pull them, they seem loose the next day?
  
  Do I need clips to keep the tomatoes from sliding down eventually or should they be good?
  
  Should I be vigorously training the tomatoes to one stem? (i.e. ever sucker gone??)
  
  What spacing do you normally use? And how much space between lines of twine? I have twine right now about every 6 inches, but the plants only went in two weeks ago!

I have built a frame for my beds (4 ft by 10 ft) with two parallel bars at each end, up 8 feet tall and then joined by a support bar that runs overtop. I can add pictures if it helps.

Extra information:

I live where we have a short hot summer, frost could happen as early as September. The first few years of growing, I pulled every sucker but then I read conflicting reports and then let them go. My tomato yields increased greatly but I had huge unmanageable plants and have struggled with support issues ever since. It's not uncommon for all my tomatoes plants to get 6 feet or more tall. The cherries (sungold, snow-white, an experimental local red) seem to be the worst for sprawl and weight. I wanted a different system after the tomatoes I grew last year snapped all my 8 foot metal garden poles (the kid covered in green plastic - bent and then snapped every one of them with the weight of tomatoes! By the end of the season, I was tying all the tomatoes together in the beds with old 12 foot pool skimmer poles and chicken wire to try to keep them from sprawling onto my other beds or my hubbies lawn! It was a disaster, although I got a huge harvest.

Any other advice on keeping tomatoes manageable is helpful!! (Maybe next year I move to all dwarves? This year I have two I'm trying out!)

[Rockoe10]

This biggest advantage with the Florida Weave is that you don't have to manage then all that much. It's a great technique for large, outdoor tomato rows. The bushing of the plants help to give the neighboring plant support.

As for spacing. I'd give them about 2 feet. They will eventually crowed, but again that helps with support.

The only trimming I would do would be the lower leaves that yellow. This will also help to expose and ripen your tomatoes during your short summer.

Twine is the biggest struggle for me too. I would go with the best you can find, then experiment with small sections with cheaper alternatives.

[bower]

I did Florida Weave the year I managed the farm tomatoes and it was great. That being said, upper ties to wooden beams in the greenhouse which cannot be overweighted. The twine OTOH has been known to snap - we had a big ball of sisal and it's uneven so weak in places I guess. I tried jute in my own greenhouse one year and it was too rough for the tender stems of my plants but in the farm greenhouse there's more exposure to outdoor temperatures and the plants don't seem to mind.
Plants at the farm were spaced 18" for single stem but I did not stick to single by any means. Every plant had at least 3 good leaders, and as you said, the yield was naturally higher. I was rigorous about pruning all leaves and suckers below the first cluster, but I allowed them to generously fill in the space above with their branches. It is better to choose to keep good leaders from the lower middle of the plant - above the first cluster but no higher than maybe waist height to get max production for the length. You can keep more than two but the higher up suckers are best pruned - they just add weight of plant without much fruit that I can expect to reach so for my own sanity I am ruthless with those high ones. I also find it impossible to manage disease issues when the plants are much higher than I can reach: they drop blossom rot down into the canopy and spoil other fruit as well. As for the suckers below the first cluster, they don't tend to be productive: they are pre-shaded by the existing growth and are often thinner and weak; they are apt to lie close to the ground and get water and dirt on them down there which promotes disease.
For the 50 or 60 plants at the farm, I went one day a week to do all the pruning and tying. I think there was one week I had to go twice for the excess growth. YMMV depending on your growing conditions. But for me it was adequate and it was a surprise - I spend a lot more time on my container plants at home and can easily get into hours of daily fussing. Yes there were sometimes big limbs that had been missed and had to be chopped, but for the most part it worked really well. I LOVED the florida weave effect, for keeping the rows clear enough to walk through in spite of the high density. I didn't pay much attention to spacing of the lines, just an as needed basis. I would sucker and train up the plants first, then tie my line at the end and run one or two weaves to keep it all together. I would guess there was a foot or more between the weaves, being done only once a week, I would run my line close to the top of new growth.

[Vanman]

We used the Florida weave for three years. Sometimes it worked very well, last year not so much. We are trying a different method this year. We bought our "tomato twine" on Amazon. We also watched a few YouTube videos to learn how to do this.

[LindyAdele]

Thank you everyone this was very helpful!!
I don't have a whole field of tomatoes or anything, just three raised beds in my urban backyard, still I fuss with them and want to make sure they plants stay as healthy as possible! I will look for tomato twine, and see if I can find some videos on Youtube as you've recommended. There is just so many there, and I trust the community here.
I find I end up watching multiple videos without learning much and one video will contradict the one before.

[Kurt]

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Found this thicker than usual mesh netting,works well with cherry and smaller rounds.

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[JRinPA]

Poly twine. Sold as tomato twine. Natural stuff will sag/stretch. Comes in a cardboard box with belt loops. Protect that box from rain and put the whole thing in a stronger belt pouch.

For poles, I have used 1/2" rebar, green garden T posts, or wood. They have to be sunk deep enough but not too high.

You run the twine through a about an 18" length of PVC pipe. Drill a hole in the very end of the pipe to act as tensioner. Whether you need it depends on the string. Beginning of box, end of box, big difference. Twine through pipe, tie off to post at start of row, and use the pipe to easily reach out and down over the plants at the height needed for that run. I weave between every plant. About 3-5 plants between subsequent posts. A very long row should be broken down into sections to keep tension. You could even do it between every post, but that might get tiresome. Don't wrap multiple times around a post, as that won't allow tension to be applied.

When you weave through to the end, then you reverse and go back. Tie it off with a tautline hitch - that is how you apply the tension. The shorter section, the more controllable, but you need two knots for each section.

Warning - do not make rows perpendicular to the prevailing heavy wind!
Warning - the bottom strings will lose tension as the lower branches die!
Warning - it can be a lot of fun going down those big weaved rows with tuning fork! Don't get carried away!

The hard part for me is getting a post height that is tall enough to get that last needed weave or two, while still be able to weave it in the beginning. A few times I have added extension posts mid season using zip ties, rebar to rebar, but it is a pain.

[foxtailferns]

At work, we would Florida weave 25-50 foot rows with 8' t-posts and poly twine. We never had any luck with natural fibers for weaving--they tend to sag almost instantly and break pretty easily. The poly twine feels somewhat wasteful and isn't fun to clean up at the end of the season, but it's better than trying to re-weave broken lines at the hottest part of summer. Our spacing was 30", but we usually let them have two or three leaders and it would just become a wall of tomatoes. I've always found that pulling pretty tightly worked best even with the poly twine. Things will always loosen over time. You shouldn't need clips if you're weaving at a good spacing and your lines are secure.

Don't wear anything you don't want stained green!

[Cole_Robbie]

For smaller beds, a wire panel secured upright to posts works great. The wire can be cattle or hog panels, or just concrete reinforcing wire if you don't mind looking at it rust.

[zeuspaul]

I don't do Florida Weave but I do use twine in the garden for the tomatoes. I tried several different jutes but I found them all to be inconsistent quality. They all had weak spots and would break. I settled on cotton butcher twine.

[zeuspaul]

I use cages, strings to an overhead support and what I call a trellis cage. I like the trellis cage best. The laterals are electric conduit attached to t-posts with a piece of wire. 1/2 inch conduit fits inside 3/4 inch conduit making it easy to extend the length. Boards placed across support the plants and can also be used for shade. Sometimes I use a piece of string to tie a branch to the conduit.

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[MissS]

I have had mold issues with jute so I now use the cotton string shown above or rubber coated wire on my plants.

[JRinPA]

I agree poly does seem wasteful. However, I do re-use a large percentage of the poly twine. After 5 months in the sun, it is still in good shape regarding deterioration. At cleanup time, I try cut just once per weave and pull them out in large pieces. Then I bundle them in a figure 8 over my spread forefinger/pinky finger. The line stacks that way, rather than a big wrap around that will tangle and snag when unrolling. Do the figure 8 and then tie it off to the bundle - wrap wrap wrap wrap around the middle, the bend the tag end, put the bend through one of the two holes in the 8, then run the tag end under that bend and pull tight so it can't unwind.
That is the way I have learned to do pretty much any rope - not taught as a kid, but through experience. I almost always see a circular wrap instead of a figure 8 when others wind stuff.
After peppers/eggplants/tomatoes I will end up with most of the twine back in 15-30 ft bundles for miscellaneous use. They can even be reused for florida weave without much trouble if you don't mind sheet bends joins everywhere. Again, the boy scouts taught a square knot to join lines, but a sheet bend is much better, albeit less pretty.

Just don't hit any poly twine with a mower or let it get in a chipper shredder. That makes a mess, maybe even ruin a bearing. As do robins that find a 10ft thread and make halfway up through the pear tree before they snag it on something (yesterday!)